Vagabond House Picture Show: Newsmakers

It has always been a dream of mine to work in the movies. Specifically, I wanted to make them. When I was really young, I wanted to be an actor. But years of parental reminders that they were only interested in having a doctor or lawyer son wore me down. I instead chose to go into writing and directing. Nothing close to medicine or law, but the parents liked the idea that they bent me in some way. Fast forward past the four years of respectable schooling, thousands in student loans, several edited shorts shot in black and white 16mm and still, the most experience I've had in the film business has been with moviehouses.

I no longer dream of red carpet premieres, feature stories in Entertainment Weekly and an appearance on Actor's Studio. But I do think of how I might program screenings at my own moviehouse. Inspired by my college days spent at Coolidge Corner and Brattle Theatre -- moviehouses that taught you something through the way they presented movies. Double features would come with a theme -- Paul Newman night would be something like "The Hustler" and "Somebody Up There Likes Me." They would play homage to a filmmaker and show all of the rarities. Sometimes, the program could resemble something like the Barnes Foundation (show a Buster Keaton movie followed by Jackie Chan's "Project A" to see the relationship between the two seemingly unconnected movies and genres). And because it was in Cambridge, the house would be packed for a Samuel Fuller night. Nowhere else could "Shock Corridor" and "The Naked Kiss" pull in the same size audience. The audience was challenged constantly, and more often than not, entertained.

So in the series, Vagabond House Picture Show, I'll attempt to serve up something of the same: clips of some kick-ass movies -- some popular, others obscure. And hopefully, they'll help to inform, provoke, question, amuse and entertain.

Newsmakers
How far would you go to sell a story?

Ace in the Hole
w. Kirk Douglas
dir. by Billy Wilder

Sweet Smell of Success
w. Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis
dir. by Alexander Mackendrick